Wooden pallets for transporting and storing goods are widely used in commerce and industry. A pallet is constructed by nailing a series of slats to transversely positioned stringers. Pallets are sometimes manually fabricated, but, for large-scale production, semiautomatic fabrication is more economical.
Various types of semiautomatic systems have been used to assist in assembling the components of wood pallets. Many systems require manual positioning of the slats and stringers prior to their semiautomatic nailing together. These systems usually nail only one side of the pallet. To assemble a double-sided pallet, the pallet must be flipped over after nailing one side. None provide automatic stacking of completed pallets.